Brown County has a history of businesses operating deep in the hills.
A hundred years ago, they were stills. Now, there are more likely to be auto repair shops, or people conducting their work through the internet.
Some local officials want to see what they can do to bring home-based businesses a little more out into the open.
The Brown County Area Plan Commission plans to talk through the first few parts of the current ordinance addressing “home occupations” at its next meeting Tuesday, Aug. 27.
This was one of the topics that a previous APC had flagged years ago as a part of the zoning ordinance that needed work. Jim Schultz was part of that discussion back then, and he came to last month’s APC meeting to follow up.
In addition to owning a home-based business, Schultz is a volunteer member of the Brown County Redevelopment Commission, which is trying to find ways to sustain the county economically in the face of declining population projections.
“We know there’s a lot of challenges out there in order for Brown County to be economically viable, and the lowest-hanging fruit is to have a business network that connects like-minded individuals, and they have to be able to acknowledge that they have these businesses. Whether they’re legal or not legal, we’ve got to solve that problem,” he said.
“I’m not saying I’m up here with a solution to it; I’m just saying it certainly would benefit the community both economically and the vibrancy of it if we could have a greater number of businesses working at home, and the best way to do that would be through setting a set of rules around whatever the parameters were and moving forward from that.”
A home occupation is currently defined as an “accessory use” of a home “for monetary or equivalent gain.”
Examples of possible “home occupations” are accountants, architects, artists, beauticians, consultants, stringed instrument instructors, insurance sales people or real estate agents. That’s not a complete list, just some examples.
The money-making activity going on there has to be conducted entirely within the “dwelling unit,” and the people doing that work also have to live there, according to current county ordinance.
Anything sold on the premises also must be produced there.
“No outside storage of any kind” is allowed at a home occupation. The primary use of the building has to be as a home so that the business being conducted “does not change the character thereof or adversely affect … the residential district of which it is a part,” the definition reads.
The county planning office only has 15 active permits for home occupations for the whole county, said Planning Director Chris Ritzmann.
Not every kind of home-based business has to have a permit, though. Some need no permit at all, and some need a “special exception” instead, which is a different and more involved process than just getting a permit.
If you employ someone in your home-based business who does not live there, you’d have to go down the special exception path, Ritzmann said. That requires a hearing before the Brown County Board of Zoning Appeals.
APC members aren’t sure how many businesses actually are operating in residential areas in Brown County, but they’re pretty sure it’s more than 15.
They’re also unsure if those business owners are purposely staying out of the permitting process because they know they’re operating out of step with the rules, or if they simply don’t know what the rules are or that any exist.
They also could be trying to avoid paying more taxes than they currently are.
The county assessor’s office assesses property for taxation purposes according to its use, not necessarily by its zoning, said Assessor Mari Miller.
Right now, the only home-based businesses that are assessed higher than residential are home-stay tourist rentals, she said. But those are also the only types of home occupation permits she was aware of, she said. “I wasn’t aware of home occupation permits being required for anything other than home-stay rentals,” she said.
“We would need to look at each home occupation permit and analyze its use and then determine if the classification should be changed to commercial.”
All businesses also are supposed to file business personal property tax forms with the assessor’s office each year, declaring the value of items like computers, tools, furniture and other items used in the business, “but often times we are not aware that people are operating a business out of their home,” Miller said.
Income taxes also are paid to the county in which a person works, and the county could benefit by having more people reporting Brown County as their place of employment, Schultz said.
Regardless of the reason for home-based businesses operating off the radar, local officials want to open up communication and see if they can come to an “easy path” to allow them to operate.
“If we had that, then people would not be afraid to come in and have to go through the process of a special exception,” Schultz said.
“Many other economies, like the Japanese after they rebuilt after WWII, their economy grew around that (small business base) exponentially. And if we can’t even tell someone that we’re doing something, we missed that opportunity.
“Without a business network, there’s no way we can work together,” he added later in the discussion. “Without everyone coming into compliance, then nobody wants to state they have this going on for fear of being shut down.”
Nobody attended the APC’s July work session on this topic except Schultz and a reporter. But APC members were able to add some comments from their own experiences.
Member Jane Gore, who’s also a real estate agent, said it’s long been a problem to find properties for people who want a live-work situation.
“I’ve had probably, I can’t tell you how many people who wanted to live and work in the county, but to try to find them something where they could do the home-based business, live and work there, was extremely difficult because of zoning,” she said.
Gore said she worked with a person for a year and a half to find a property where he could conduct his small manufacturing business and “exhausted all possibilities.” He ended up moving his family and business to another county.
“We’re continuing to lose population and students, and we need to fix that,” Schultz said.
Other APC members said they understand that people in a residential area should have a reasonable expectation to be free from the excessive noise and traffic that a business could bring. But with so many people ordering things online these days and getting frequent deliveries to their homes, they wondered if a home-based business’ shipping or supply traffic would even be noticed.
“I see it as a barrier for us,” Schultz said about the rules and processes in place. When he was working in electrical contracting in the late ‘70s, he said he found businesses all over the county, most of them craftspeople feeding goods into the Nashville market, “and at that time, none of them were permitted, but it was a robust economy,” he said.
“I’m trying to figure out a path through it that gives the people that want to maintain their serene beauty, listen to the birds chirp, and at the same time we can produce income, because in order to live here, we need to have income.”
At the Aug. 27 meeting, the APC intends to review about the first page and a half of the five-and-a-half-page ordinance on home occupations, sections A through D. The ordinance is posted at browncounty-in.gov. Click on “departments,” then “planning commission,” then “Brown County Zoning Ordinance” and scroll down to Section 5.2.
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County zoning ordinance specifically lists some business types that are exempt from getting home occupation permits.
Those are artists; authors and composers; dressmakers/seamstresses; “home crafts” such as weaving, cabinet making and model making; an office of a religious leader; an office of a salesperson; individual music instruction; individual tutoring; boarding in up to two rooms for up to two people; and other activities that require no increase in parking areas, traffic or noise levels beyond what’s normal for a neighborhood of single-family homes.
The “no permit” part only applies to those businesses if no retail sales are being conducted “at the home occupation site.” If sales are occurring there, they do need a permit. However, if those sales are only occurring on the internet, a permit would not be needed.
“If the public is not visiting the property to purchase the goods originating from the home, the lucrative craft is not carried on out of doors, and there is no increase in traffic from delivery vehicles to and from the home, and no employees other than occupants of the home are engaged, then a home occupation permit is not required,” said Planning Director Chris Ritzmann. “This use would be similar to a writer, composer, quilter or crafter of birdhouses who takes the product of their craft elsewhere for sale.”
Home-based businesses that do require permits include architects, accountants, real estate agents or salespeople, insurance agents, land surveyors, upholsterers, or any other type of business which intends to conduct retail sales out of the home. Other types of home-based businesses could be considered for home occupation permits if they would only increase the parking areas, traffic and noise in a “minimal” way that would “not be offensive to surrounding residents,” the ordinance says.
Home occupation permits are granted by the area planning director.
Special exceptions are different. To get one, a business owner would have to make an application to the planning office, then go before the Brown County Board of Zoning Appeals for a hearing.
A special exception is needed for the following types of potentially home-based business activities in residential districts, according to current county ordinance: one-operator beauty or barber shop; auto repair or painting of vehicles, trailers or boats (no more than four licensed vehicles allowed other than the owner’s vehicles); instruction of two or more students at a time; photo developing or studio; antique shop; private school with organized classes; bed-and-breakfast; warehouse; or any business conducted in a two-family or multi-family dwelling.
If a home occupation business employs people other than family members living in the home, it also needs a special exception, and even with a special exception, it’s only limited to two such employees.
Other business activities in a home also may need a special exception if they “would in all likelihood involve increased parking areas, noise, or vibration levels, or outdoor activities,” the ordinance says.
“I find our current home occupation ordinance to be sufficient to protect the public and quite workable in this bright, artisanal community,” Ritzmann said.
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